I decided at long-last to finish ripping the final few CDs from my collection into my computer. After several passes at the collection the last few years, the only remaining titles left were the majority of my Live Phish collection. The main reason I put them off is because they're all multiple disc sets and therefore time consuming to rip.

The original set of twenty albums came in binder pages loaded into cardboard sleeves. As those sell, the repressings are in regular quad cases. I had noticed a couple of years ago that some of the binder pages had started to leave a little bit of goo on the discs. It was only one or two of the set and so I wiped it off and didn't think much of it. I pulled the full set off the shelf on Thursday, pulled the binder page out of the first sleeve to note that it was wrinkled. I opened it up and the plastic has begun to break down leaving a massive amount of goo on the discs, which when it has sat long enough, is eating through the discs and into the foil layer, making the discs unplayable.

I spent the rest of the day and evening Thursday hitting the complete set with Goo Gone. I managed to salvage most of them, with most of the booklets damaged but the discs are now cleaned and playable. Numbers 1, 4 and 19 had at least one disc destroyed. Actually, 4 was the worst of the lot, with all discs completely unplayable. Radio Active Records had a few in the used bin, so I popped over today and picked up (and cleaned) a replacement 19.

Some searching has turned up similar complaints from others. Phish Dry Goods is replacing copies they have in stock for people who bought from them. Most of mine came from the Sound Garden when I lived in Syracuse, as well as a few other shops, so unless the label (Elektra) does anything about it, there's likely no recourse. Given that when Warner Brothers screwed up the DVD-Audio pressing of the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, it was the band that made it right, that is unlikely. So, I will end up repurchasing the other two albums and remembering to unload discs from any dicey looking packaging in the future.

I didn't relay this just to gripe about Phish and Elektra Records. It's something to think about when one is thinking of archives. Archives wrestle with the problems of keeping copies of various media. They are often, as in this case, pieces of a mass printing. Obviously, these damaged discs can be replaced with repressings, used copies or on the Live Phish download website and the masters are presumably still sitting in Phish's archives. But today's mass media is tomorrow's rare item. I spend a lot of my time as a record collector looking for hard-to-find pieces. Sure, a lot of the music is available on recent compact disc or online reissues, but it is presented differently. Regardless of what some think, there is a difference between an original vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and a contemporary CD copy. The original sounds different, looks different and is presented differently. Admittedly, this is an obvious choice due to the additional packaging of the original, which included posters and stickers and since the artwork, including the iconic cover, has been completely changed for the recent reissues. But the same is true of most pre-compact disc music.

Beyond this, there is a large hole in the record, as it were. While most of the music of the last twenty years (or even thirty years) is readily available on compact disc from an online retailer, or maybe even a local retailer if you're lucky enough to live in a city which still has one, there is still a ton of music from before 1980 which has never been reissued on compact disc or made available online. And even since 1980, a large number of albums have gone out-of-print. While most of the large sellers remain available, I have items in my collection that if they were lost would be near impossible to find. I have at least one John Zorn album that I have never seen for sale again since the day I bought it.

In short, today's mass media is tomorrow's forgotten past. The most popular artists of a given era have probably seen reissue campaigns. Frank Sinatra, for example, is well-represented. But until recently, it was near impossible to find any Laurel Aitken material recorded before 1980, including his biggest UK hits in their original versions. Grover put out a couple of collections in the 1990s, but there were still large holes that have been filled by the recent reissue campaigns of Cherry Red/Captain Oi! All of the albums have been mastered from copies of records owned by collectors as the master tapes are long lost. If it wasn't for these collectors, the music might be lost to us. As it is, it was missing for many years. And this is but one example.

In addition, this brings up the whole notion of digital permanence. When compact discs were first introduced to the marketplace, they were touted as a perfect replacement for the venerable vinyl record. Not only were they quieter and more convenient, they were indestructible. You would never have to worry about scratchy records again and they would last 100 years or more. Well, I am currently in a situation where I have records that are sixty years old in my collection that still play well and sound good and compact discs that are less than ten that are unplayable due to having been destroyed by the packaging. A strange situation, yes, but still something to consider when thinking about questions of long-term preservation. I present no answers here, only complaints and questions, but I think there is something here worth a bit of consideration.